News,

Top stories:

Northern Ireland pro-abortion group accused of bullying minister over guidance

SPUC has accused the Family Planning Association (FPA) of using the courts to bully Edwin Poots, Northern Ireland's Minister for Health, into cutting short his revision of abortion guidance for doctors in the Province. Reacting to the High Court decision to grant leave to the FPA to apply for a judicial review of the department's actions in re-drafting the guidance (BBC, 24 September), Liam Gibson, SPUC's Northern Ireland development officer, commented: "It is clear that the FPA is trying to bounce the Minister into issuing abortion guidance because they believe that the longer it takes to produce the guidance the harder it will be to use it to undermine the current law. [SPUC, 24 September]

Other stories:

Abortion

• Threat to legalise abortion in Uruguay [Guardian, 25 September]
• US politicians ask Irish PM to keep abortion out of Ireland [Irish Central, 24 September]
• Incorrect assertions and unsubstantiated claims in A,B and C case [Pat Buckley, 24 September]
• Scottish Catholic bishop compares abortion to Holocaust [BBC, 23 September]
• SPUC youth blog on abortion and the US presidential race [SPUC youth blog , 21 September]
• Woman dies from infection after UK abortion clinic failed to follow up [Mail, 20 September]
• Pro-life group challenges Department of Health in wake of mysterious abortion case [SPUC, 17 September]

Embryology

• Woman who had baby using surrogate sues over maternity pay denial [Mail, 24 September]
• Denmark tightens sperm donor law after NF1 transmissions [BBC, 25 September]
• Mitochondrial transfer produces clones and GM babies [SPUC, 17 September]

Euthanasia

• UK anti-euthanasia groups launch billboard campaign [ALERT, 26 September]
• Warning to Canada and the UK - Oregon Health Plan steers patients towards suicide [Peter Saunders, 24 September]
• British NHS issues DNR for man with Down Syndrome without consent [LifeNews.com, 17 September]

Population

• Pro-life open letter to Chinese leader on 32nd year of one-child policy [LifeNews.com, 25 September]

Euthanasia

• Patients with dementia and psychiatric illnesses included as Dutch euthanasia cases rise steeply [Peter Saunders, 25 September]

Sexual ethics

• Gay marriage debate has turned unpleasant, argues UK Catholic columnist [Catholic Herald, 26 September]
• France set to ban the words 'mother' and 'father' from official documents [Telegraph, 24 September]
• David Cameron enlists help from American pressure group to help push through gay marriage [Peter Saunders, 23 September]

General

• New English Catholic bishop asks the faithful to fight ‘strangling counter-culture of death’ [Catholic Herald, 26 September]
• Ireland's Children's Rights referendum [Pat Buckley, 26 September]
• Pope Benedict reminds Christian politicians of their duty to protect life from conception to natural death and to protect marriage and the family [Pat Buckley, 25 September]

To subscribe to SPUC's email information services, please visit www.spuc.org.uk/em-signup. The reliability of the news herein is dependent on that of the cited sources, which are paraphrased rather than quoted. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the society. © Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, 2018